castrate
/kæsˈtɹeɪt/
"castrate" is a 8-letter English headword indexed on PlainSpell.
The verdict
“castrate” is an uncommon English word, ranked #64,250 in English word frequency and used as a noun.
- #64,250
- frequency rank, English
- 8
- letters
According to Wiktionary data (CC BY-SA, analyzed May 6, 2026) - A castrated man; a eunuch.
| Property | Value |
|---|---|
| Headword | castrate |
| Language | English |
| Part of speech | Noun |
| IPA | /kæsˈtɹeɪt/ |
| Letters | 8 |
| Frequency rank | #64,250 |
| Misspellings tracked | 0 |
| Confusable pairs | 0 |
| Source | Wiktionary (kaikki.org) |
Where “castrate” sits in English frequency
Spelling & Dictionary Insight
The English entry for castrate is 8 letters long, classified as a noun, and transcribed in the International Phonetic Alphabet as /kæsˈtɹeɪt/. Corpus data places it at rank #64,250 in overall English word frequency, marking it as uncommon enough that many writers pause before typing it. The dominant gloss from Wiktionary reads: "A castrated man; a eunuch.".
Zero misspellings are on record for castrate in our index, which points to an orthography that plays by predictable English rules. Our dataset records no confusable match here, a sign it's visually distinctive enough not to be mixed up with another word.
Etymologically, the entry records: Likely from an unattested sense of Middle English castrat (“(adjective) castrated; (noun) a castrated animal”), substantivized borrowing of Latin castrātus, perfect passive participle of castrō (“to prune, amputate, castrate”), see -ate (noun-forming suffix)). The correct English form is castrate, spelled C-A-S-T-R-A-T-E.
Definition
- 1A castrated man; a eunuch.
Etymology
Likely from an unattested sense of Middle English castrat (“(adjective) castrated; (noun) a castrated animal”), substantivized borrowing of Latin castrātus, perfect passive participle of castrō (“to prune, amputate, castrate”), see -ate (noun-forming suffix)).
Definitions, pronunciation, and etymology for this entry are drawn from Wiktionary via the kaikki.org structured extract (CC BY-SA); frequency ordering uses the FrequencyWords open word-frequency list (2018 English corpus, MIT). See the methodology for how each field is sourced and updated.
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Using “castrate”
The practical upshot for anyone who landed here from a spell-check.
- The one correct English spelling is C-A-S-T-R-A-T-E - every other letter order is a misspelling in standard orthography.
- Say it as /kæsˈtɹeɪt/ (IPA); tap the speaker on the pronunciation badge to hear it where audio exists.
- Browse more English words and confusable pairs in the same reference. English words
Data Source
Wiktionary (via kaikki.org), licensed under CC BY-SA & GFDL. Word ordering uses an open word-frequency list; misspelling variants are generated by edit-distance from the correct headword.